Touchdown! Private Chinese rocket aces landing on 2nd-ever flight

China just notched another big spaceflight milestone.

The Beijing startup LandSpace successfully landed the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket this evening (Aug.

18), becoming the first Chinese company ever to do so during an orbital launch.

It was just the second Chinese orbital rocket touchdown overall.

The first was pulled of on July 10 by a Long March 10B , which is built by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).

The Long March 10B had some help returning to Earth, settling softly into a net-like device affixed to a ship at sea.

But Zhuque-3 came down on terra firma and stayed upright thanks to a set of landing legs, like those sported by SpaceX 's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

"This mission marks China's first-ever successful recovery attempt of the first stage of an orbital-class launch vehicle using landing legs, and China's first successful booster recovery on land," LandSpace said via X this evening .

"It is a pivotal flight test for Zhuque-3 as it transitions from the technological demonstration and verification phase toward the engineering application phase of reusability," the company added.

"This mission further verified the design correctness and reliability of the Zhuque-3 reusable launch vehicle system, validated its first-stage recovery capability and engineering maturity." Zhuque-3 broadly resembles the Falcon 9 , which made its first landing way back in 2015 and now has more than 600 of them under its belt.

Both feature a reusable booster and an expendable upper stage, and they're about the same height — 230 feet (70 meters) for the Falcon 9 and 216 feet (66 m) for Zhuque-3.

Their lifting power is similar as well.

Zhuque-3 can haul about 40,350 pounds (18,300 kilograms) to low Earth orbit , while the Falcon 9's LEO payload capacity is 50,265 pounds (22,800 kg).

The two rockets use two very different fuels, however — a combination of liquid oxygen (LOX) and rocket-grade kerosene for the Falcon 9, compared to LOX and liquid methane for Zhuque-3.